At the setting of the sun a cold breeze swept through the hall. A single ray of fading twilight funneled through the thinly cracked front gate, piercing the smoky haze of the longhall’s fires, and lit the form of a wizened old woman.

  “Settle down little cubs,” she said, speaking with her leathery skin and snow-white hair that draped just past her shoulders. Around her sat many children, little beasts with dirty feet and large earnest eyes.

  “Hear me well, and know the spirit of your inheritance.” Her voice smelled of hoarfrost and smoke, her words moaning like oak turning in heavy wind. “In an age long past, now remembered in but stone and soil, this earth was barren. There were no mighty trees whose limbs climb toward the heavens, no great mountain throats set to sing the coming of the sun. Man’s feet had not yet tested this virgin loam and there were no beasts to bear sight of its beauty.” She smiled and eyed the children keenly, “And there were no cubs to make a mess of things. No, there was nothing but the giant, Yva. In the beginning she stood in this land we now call home, Yvaheim. Frozen on her knees, her hands clawing towards the stars, trapped outside the passage of time.

  “One day, Yva’s eyes opened underneath the ice, and the great fire within her breast ignited. With this, her prison began to melt, great umbral shards of her prison crashing to the earth. What melted became our oceans, lakes and rivers. What remained became the glaciers of the northern sea. Eventually, Yva was freed. In her triumph, she stomped around the land with a great and tremendous fury. As her feet quaked the earth, she raised our mountains. Her screams echoed so loud that, even to this day, they whistle all around us as the wind. Though, no victory lasts forever.

  “Yva tired, little ones, her fury faded and she realized that she was alone. Sorrow took hold of her, a depthless loneliness that wracked her very being and she wept for many days, longing for companionship. In her grief, she tore her right arm free of her body and cast it into the earth. There it shattered in a thunderous crash, its splinters flying far and wide. Watered by her tears, they took root, growing into our great and noble trees.”

  The fire cracked, smoke kicking high within the hall.

  “Yva was soothed by the trees, her loneliness quenched, and they grew close over years. Though, a day did come where Yva felt the need to create once more. And so it was that she pulled loose her remaining arm. With the forest’s help she crushed it into many tiny seeds. These seeds were planted under the sheltering shade of her guardian trees where they grew, not into other plants, but into beasts: bears, elk, fowl and fish, all that walk the earth or swim beneath it.

  “As the beasts sprouted Yva felt her strength begin to wane. Knowing that the end was drawing near, she commanded the beasts to carve away the rest of her flesh and for the trees to bury her bones. It was from this flesh that came the first men.”

  The old woman shifted suddenly, pulling powder from a satchel at her waist and casting it into the fire, creating a cloud of smoke a verdant green. The children cooed and awed in delight as the smoke coalesced into a woman’s silhouette. The woman pranced among them, dancing from one head to another, paying their waving hands no mind. The woman of smoke eventually slowed and stiffened. Her form grew broad and tall, becoming that of a tree.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “So strong was her spirit that, even in death, she grew, becoming a great and powerful tree. Taller than any other, whose roots now stretch throughout the earth below us; her boughs give blessings of order and thought to her descendents. Soul and mind, like leaf and branch, inspiration the fruit of which it gives, and love its sweetness. Oak and birch, beast and man alike. We are Yva’s children.”

  A cry was heard, a woman screaming in curdling pain. The hall fell silent, the smoke fading in a low draft. Another cry rang out. The silence deepened, followed by the distinct song of a newborn’s wail. At the end of the hall a shadow approached from the Jarl’s quarters. A handmaiden appeared with a triumphant grin, carrying a pair of swaddled babes. One silent, and the other crying.

  “A boy and a girl, twins!” She announced.

  The hall erupted in cheer.

  The old crone’s gaze narrowed on the twins. All of the commotion caused the crying child, the girl, to commit to her protests with force.

  She will grow to be strong.

  Her blood froze upon meeting the boy’s placid stare. He sat silent in the handmaid's arms, unmoved, gazing out with clouded, opalescent eyes.

  The boy is blind.

  *******************************************************************************************

  And at that very same moment, as those children were born into the world, a war was fought and lost in the span of a conversation. Two of them. One above, one below. A beast before a king. A tale as old as stories have been told.

  “Come now, let us put on airs no longer. You have already lost.” Said a man in white. The cloth of his robe absorbed the dawn, shining like a beacon in the morning light and burning the eyes of those who dared to look upon him. He spoke into the waters beneath the ice upon which he stood. Within these deepest depths, the darkest recesses of ice and mind and salted glacier, the great orange eye trembled.

  Fear.

  The price of untangling the unknowable; of piercing the haze of all that might be, of all that could be, and all that will be. The burden of witnessing what should not be. As powerful an armament as any blade or spell, an incantation without peer, and damnation from which there is no escape.

  We are lost.

  “You have seen it, plain as day.” The man in white continued. “You cannot hide from us. You certainly cannot fight us. You could flee. I am…unsure how far you would make it.” He said sadly, his face hidden and veiled. “No. Let us end it, now, and see to it that all parties remain hale and whole, hmm? Work with me and we will end this conflict before it begins.”

  A moment passed, the fiery glow of the sub-glacial beast shifted in the dark waters as it watched the man in white. The eye then answered, the ice rumbling with its dark cantor.

  “I have seen it, your truth.

  Thy wicked ichor, bleeding tongue.

  You give terms to those without say.

  Such mercy casts thy lies undone.”

  The man straightened. “The nature of the Church’s terms are not for you to understand, beast.” The man said, his voice proud before the abyss. “What comes for you, beyond the shadow of the southern hills, will rape this land for all its worth and leave it barren. Only we can stop it, and we will; for we are merciful. Indeed, we offer terms. I ask you, o’ Poet of the Depths, would you dare to hear them?”

  The great orange eye blinked. And, unknowable to all but itself, it shuttered in disgust. It was afraid. Afraid for its life, afraid for its home, afraid for everything it ever knew or cared for. And it was this fear that drove it to betrayal.

  “Yes.”